FAVOURITE QUOTES

If no one out there understands start your own revolution and cut out the middleman.— Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards, Billy Bragg

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.— Martin Luther King Jr.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.— John Lennon

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.— Margaret Mead

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.— George Orwell

I think masculinity and femininity, it's something that's very old fashioned. There's a whole new generation of people that aren't defined by their sex or their race or by who they like to sleep with.— Johnny Weir

Don't let them tell you it can't be done. My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.— Jack Layton

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.— Andy Warhol

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.— Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

It always seems impossible until it’s done.— Nelson Mandela

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.— Martin Luther King Jr.

Don't blow it — good planets are hard to find.— quoted in Time Magazine, 1996

If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.— British Labour leader Neil Kinnock's warning to the public, 1983

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.— Rabindranath Tagore

Nothing in the world is easier — or lazier — than the perpetual sneer.— L Garvin (Globe & Mail commenter)

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you've got to be kind.— God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight —
Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.— Lovers in a Dangerous Time, Bruce Cockburn

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.— I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, Philip K. Dick

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.— Irene Peter

Painting is not made to decorate rooms. It is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness.— Pablo Picasso

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.— "The Triumph of Stupidity," Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935, Bertrand Russell

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.— Ferdinand Foch

Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.— Sofia Kovalevskaya

I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually. I guess that we thought we had a little more time.— Daniel Patrick Moynihan, reacting to the death of John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.— Alice Walker

The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.— The Village, directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.—Patti Smith

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.— Iain Thomas

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.— Lena Horne

Just the attitude alone makes me sad: ‘We have to help our girls and
teach them to be confident.’ Well, guess what, young girls. You aren’t
damsels in distress. You aren’t hostages to the words of your peers. You
aren’t the victims that even your well-meaning teachers and advocates
think you are.—Mindy Kaling

The pursuit of truth is a form of courage.— Dublin Unitarian Church sign, St. Stephen's Green, summer 2008

Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.— Winston Churchill

In art, as in life, everything is possible, if it is based on love.— Marc Chagall

The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.— A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut

You get what you settle for.— Thelma & Louise, written by Callie Khouri

Time is the longest distance between two places.—The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams

It wasn't his [the Exxon Valdez captain's] driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours.— Greenpeace advertisement caption, New York Times, 25 February 1990

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.— Ray Bradbury

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.— Louis Nizer

The soul has no gender.—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.— The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

The pleasure offered by the Star Wars films corresponds very closely to our basic conditioning; it is extremely reactionary, as all mindless and automatic pleasure tends to be. The finer pleasures are those we have to work for.— Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era, Robin Wood

Not all those who wander are lost.— The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?— Hillel

Sexism is a social disease.— Unknown

All great truths begin as blasphemies.— George Bernard Shaw

Capitalism unchecked is not a democratic system.— Serj Tankian

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.— Abraham Maslow

Don't let the bastards grind you down.— Unknown

You will never see adults more scared of a YA novel than when the teenagers in it are acting like actual teenagers.— Courtney Summers

Canadian & Irish novelist of character-driven fiction from horror to sci-fi to slice-of-life. Also writes under the name Cara Martin. Film school grad. Time traveller. Billy Bragg fan. Living with chronic illness. True believer in the John Lennon quote, “If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”